Annie Barrows’ The Truth According to Us is a book so rooted in its time (the ’30s) and place (West Virginia) that it’s easy to feel completely immersed in this world and far removed from modern day realities while reading. Simultaneously, there’s a timelessness to this story — as if we could meet characters Layla and Jottie at our neighborhood coffee shop or local pub or as if their financial worries could be our own. It’s the rare story that can accomplish both things.
For fans of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, which Barrows co-authored, the lovely characters and immersive qualities found in this book should come as no surprise. Like The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, The Truth According to Us is a work of historical fiction, and while each novel takes place at a different time and in a different location, each is set in a time and place where healing seems to be a priority. For The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, the time is Europe after World War II. In The Truth According to Us Barrows takes us back to the late ’30s when America is trying to crawl its way out of the Great Depression and back into economic prosperity. Each book also features a writer as a main character.
The Truth According to Us includes some of the politics (and parties) in Washington, D.C. and New York but primarily takes place in rural West Virginia. Layla Beck, one of main characters, sets things in motion when she angers her powerful political father by refusing to marry someone who, in her words, is “as shallow as a dewdrop”. Her father cuts her off—telling his brother Ben: “I don’t give a good goddamn what job you give her. I want her out of the house and off my dime.”
Ben arranges for Layla to join the Federal Writers’ Project, but Layla isn’t going down without a fight. She writes to her Uncle Ben and begs for a secretarial job, particularly one that doesn’t require her to leave the city. His responds bluntly:
Do you realize that nearly one-quarter of the employable citizens of this country are out of work? Do you realize that I receive dozens of letter each week from diligent, well-educated men and women imploring me for a job, any job, on the project? These people are desperate… They’ve been unemployed for so long, they’ve forgotten what it’s like to work… These are people who never thought they’d have to beg, and yet here they are, begging me for a job that won’t pay them enough to keep food in their stomachs… There’s an opening on the West Virginia Writers’ Project. I have, against my better judgment, given you that position. Be grateful or be damned.
So off Layla goes, not particularly gratefully, to the land of apples, cows and socks. In one of her first letters, Layla tells a friend “I don’t know how I’ll bear it—trudging around Macedonia, West Virginia, in the blazing heat, taking down the reminiscences of a town full of toothless old hicks. I can hear it now: ‘Along about ’95 or ’96, the cows died o’ the worm and we din’t have a lick o’ meat for ten year and all the chirren got rickets…’” Layla’s wit stays sharp to the end, but by the end, her choice of targets has changed. And while some of her decisions are certainly head shaking, most likely she’ll win over readers just as she wins over the residents of Macedonia—it just takes a little time.
Layla is surrounded by other interesting characters—some she interviews as part of Macedonia’s history and some she meets in other ways. Because her father won’t provide any financial support, Layla is forced to live off her salary and therefore boards with a local family, the Romeyns.
The Romeyn family is, to say the least, a bit quirky. Felix, the patriarch of the family, is often charming but is also a womanizing bootlegger. His daughter Willa is a precocious book-loving pre-teen who provides readers with fun little snippets like: “If Jane Eyre had only looked around a little, she might have saved herself a lot of heartache”. They are also a family, like most families, that has its share of secrets and stories—so many almost mini-mysteries that need solving. At the heart of them all is a fire and the untimely death of a young man.
There’s much to love in this book (although the epilogue might have tied things up just a smidgeon too neatly—particularly since one of the chapters ends with the wonderful sentiment “No story is ever really over”), but my favorite passages relate back to the title and the idea of truth—particularly the way the truth mixes with history and memory. Relatively early on, Layla is reminded “All of us see a story according to our own lights. None of us is capable of objectivity. You must beware your own sources.” Layla replies “If none of us can be objective, then the problem is intractable, and all history is suspect.” One of the many things in this story that is as true today as it was in the ’30s.